Neoplatonism and Advaita Vedānta — The One and Brahman: Emanation and Māyā

Both traditions place at the apex of reality a principle that is beyond being, beyond thought, beyond predication. Both call this the highest reality and describe it in terms of what it is not (via negativa / neti neti). Both describe a descending hierarchy from this ultimate: Nous / Mahāt (intellect/cosmic mind), Soul / jīva (individual soul), and the material world at the bottom.

Both traditions have a rich theory of the soul's return to its source: epistrophē (return) in Plotinus; liberation (mokṣa) through jñāna in Advaita. Both describe this return as involving the recognition of what the soul always was, not the acquisition of something new.

Neoplatonism: the One generates reality by emanation (proodos) — a necessary overflow, like light from the sun, not a willed act. The hierarchy: One → Nous → Soul → Matter. Each level is real; the One is most real; matter is the least real (barely real — the privation of the One's good). The soul descends into matter and must return to the One through philosophical contemplation and mystical union (henosis).

Advaita: Brahman does not emanate — it appears as the world through māyā / avidyā (cosmic ignorance). This is vivartavāda (apparent transformation), not real transformation. The soul (jīva) is already Brahman — it has not genuinely descended; it appears to have done so through superimposition. There is no genuine hierarchy of being, since Brahman alone is real.

The crucial difference: Plotinus's emanation is real — Nous and Soul genuinely exist, even if at a lower level of reality than the One. The return of the soul is a real journey back up a real hierarchy.

Śaṅkara's māyā makes the hierarchy itself an appearance. The soul's apparent descent into individual existence was never real. There is no hierarchy of being — only Brahman and the appearance of multiplicity. The 'return' (liberation) is not a real journey but a recognition that the departure never happened.

This generates a significant difference in the theory of the individual: for Plotinus, individual souls are real (at the level of Soul hypostasis). For Advaita, individual souls are ultimately unreal — their individuality is superimposition on Brahman.

Neoplatonism: individual souls are real — they descend into matter and return to the One. In the One, the individual is absorbed but the experience of union (henosis) is reported as the most fully real experience the soul can have.

Advaita: individual souls are ultimately unreal — their individuality is superimposition. At liberation, the appearance of individuality is removed; the soul recognises itself as Brahman.

Neoplatonism: henosis — mystical union with the One. Described as the soul 'becoming' the One, though technically the distinction between 'soul' and 'the One' dissolves in the experience.

Advaita: mokṣa — recognition of identity with Brahman. Jīvanmukti — liberated while living in the body.

The most likely verdict: independent philosophical convergence, potentially with some historical contact facilitated by Alexandria's role as a meeting point of Indian, Persian, and Greek thought. The structural parallels are too precise to be coincidental in philosophical terms — both traditions are working on the same problem (how can the individual consciousness be both real as experience and ultimately identical with an infinite ground?) and arriving at similar architectures. The difference in emanation vs māyā is real and philosophically significant — it reflects different intuitions about whether the apparent world has genuine ontological status or is pure appearance.